S.J. still tops for the long commute

Tuesday

Mar 5, 2013 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON — San Joaquin County commuters are nearly twice as likely to spend an hour or more to get to work than commuters across the country, according to newly released figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Zachary K. Johnson

STOCKTON — San Joaquin County commuters are nearly twice as likely to spend an hour or more to get to work than commuters across the country, according to newly released figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

And San Joaquin is one of the top starting points for so-called “megacommuters,” or people who take 90 minutes or more and travel at least 50 miles to get to work.

In 2011, about 15 percent of San Joaquin County residents spent 60 minutes or more getting to work, according to a U.S. Census survey figures scheduled for release today. Nationwide, about 8 percent of workers spend at least that long to get to work. For California, it's higher, at about 10 percent.

The new figures are in line with statistics from recent years that show about a quarter of San Joaquin County's work force looks elsewhere for jobs. And tens of thousands drawn to the county for cheaper housing continue to have long commutes to jobs to the west.

The 90-mile route Teri Nelmark's van pool follows in the morning takes two hours or more. It's time the passengers in the van spend sleeping, she said.

“You need to adjust your sleep schedule,” she said. “It takes about three months to get used to it, then you fall into the swing of things.”

The cost of living is lower in the Central Valley, even when considering the cost of gas, said Nelmark, 55. And there are more job opportunities for higher pay in the Bay Area, she said.

For the first two years, she drove by herself from Manteca to her Oakland job, but for the past 14 she has been part of a van pool to split the transportation costs and time spent behind the wheel. It picks up in Tracy and Manteca and goes as far as the Financial District in San Francisco.

Nelmark is trying to fill a vacant spot in the van pool through Commute Connection, a program to help San Joaquin Valley residents share rides to work. There are currently about 90 van pools originating in the county, though some stay entirely within the county lines, said Michael Swearingen, senior regional planner at the San Joaquin Council of Governments, which runs the program.

“It's not surprising,” that the commuting pattern of recent years hasn't changed in the most recently released Census statistics, he said.

And that's been a significant number of “extreme commuters,” traveling from the relatively low housing costs in the county to the higher salaries in the Bay Area, said Jeff Michael, director of the University of the Pacific's Forecasting Center. Add that to job growth in the Bay Area and the fact the difference in housing costs is now at record levels — that pattern isn't changing, he said.

San Joaquin County residents are not only people on the long-haul to Bay Area jobs.

Among metropolitan areas with the longest commutes, the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area counts the most “megacommuters” among its work force, according to the U.S. Census. More than 2 percent of the Bay Area metro area travels more than 90 minutes and 50 miles.

The San Joaquin County to Alameda County trek is among the busiest mega-commuter routes in the country. It shares a spot on a Census Top 10 list with six routes to New York, two to Los Angeles and one to San Diego.

The average megatrip to Alameda County from San Joaquin County is 104.1 minutes.But most San Joaquin County workers still work in their own county, so the average time for all commuters in the county is 28 minutes.